Maryam claims onlooker status to distance herself from the blithering Donaldsons and to dodge the advances of Bitsy’s widowed father, but her aloofness is really ontological, an innate standoffishness familiar to Tyler’s readers.

Rabelaisian ditty, a gross amazing jest, a chuckle of deep Satyric humour; -- and the monstrous "thickness" of Life, its friendly aplomb and nonchalance, its grotesque irreverence, its shy shrewd common-sense, its tough fibres, and portentous indifference to "distinction"; tumbles us over in the mud -- for all our "aloofness" -- and roars over us, like a romping bull-calf!